This is in the nature of a book review.

The book is "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man." It is a transcription of a symposium held at Boston University on November 20, 1972. The speakers included superluminaries such as Carl Sagan, Philip Morrison and Ashley Montagu. The book is published by NASA's Scientific and Technical Information Office, and is available from the Government Printing Office at $1.25, postpaid.

Save your money.

The men who made up the symposium's panel were a distinguished group of experts in astronomy, physics, biology, anthropology and theology. Each of them an acknowledged leader in his field.

But what is an expert? The dictionary defines "expert" as one who is "taught by use, practice or experience; clever; skillful . . . hence, one who has a special skill or knowledge in a subject; a specialist." The word comes from a Latin root, experiri, which means, "to try."

While each of the learned gentlemen on the panel at Boston University may have been an expert in his own field, none of them are experts in extraterrestrial biology. None of them has had "use, practice or experience" with extraterrestrial life.

George Gaylord Simpson pointed out from his Harvard bastion, when NASA created a special research team for exobiology: "This is the first time in the history of science that a discipline has been established before proof of its subject matter came to hand."

Granted, the BU panelists were not—and could not be—experts in the study of extraterrestrial life. Still, they are very intelligent and capable men. Yet their remarks, as transcribed in this book, sound curiously weary, stale, flat and unprofitable to a science-fiction reader.

Who were the panelists?

Carl Sagan needs little introduction here; he is one of the world's foremost astronomers and a pioneer in seeking the bases for detecting extraterrestrial life. Philip Morrison is unquestionably one of the most brilliant of human beings; a physicist, a philosopher of science, a teacher (as opposed to an educator), a lucid, witty, charming man; he suggested back in the 1950's that radio telescopes should be used to search the heavens for meaningful signals from alien intelligent races. Ashley Montagu is an anthropologist and social biologist of worldwide stature. Krister Stendahl is Dean of the Harvard School of Theology. George Wald is a Nobel laureate biologist, also from Harvard. Richard Berendzen is an astronomer at BU, an historian of science, and served as moderator for the panel.

You'd expect that men of this caliber would produce a powerful, free-ranging discussion of the possibilities and consequences of discovering life on other worlds. You'd be wrong.

Sagan was by far the most interesting, mainly because he was the first speaker and got most of the groundwork clearly established. He confined his remarks to communicating by radio or other electromagnetic means with extraterrestrials. As did all the panelists. They rejected outright the idea that there might be intelligent life elsewhere in our own solar system, and that an intelligent race from another star could physically cross interstellar distances.

Sagan asked a basic question: How many intelligent races might there be in the Milky Way galaxy? Then he pointed out that the answer is unknowable, because we don't know much about any of the factors involved—which include the rate at which new stars are born, how many stars have planets, how many planets might be suitable for life to evolve on them, how likely it is for life to develop intelligence, whether or not intelligent creatures will produce technological civilizations, and how long a technological civilization can endure before it collapses or destroys itself.

All solid points, and all of them considered in science-fiction circles for many years. Perhaps this was new to the audience at BU, but if there were any science-fiction fans in that audience, they must have started yawning early.

Sagan did make one important announcement. He stated that, when the current improvements are finished on the Arecibo radio telescope, it will be powerful enough to pick up radio signals from anywhere in the galaxy if they're beamed out by a similarly-powerful radio transmitter. In other words, we can now converse with any race in the Milky Way that has reached our level of technology.

Apparently this thought made other members of the panel uneasy.

Sagan also pointed out that we have already sent signals—radio, television, and radar microwaves—out into interstellar space, even though we didn't do it deliberately. He said, "You can imagine a wavefront surrounding the Earth, traveling at the velocity of light, carrying on it Duffv's Tavern (a radio show of the 1940's), the 1928 election returns, and Enrico Caruso arias. It's faint, but it is out there. And you can imagine civilizations some thirty, forty, fifty light-years out, saying, `Ah, so that's what they were doing on Earth fifty years ago!'"

Wald, the biologist, started out by saying he assumes that life on other worlds will be based on carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, just as we are.

Then he showed how really ethnocentric he is by decrying the possibility that contact with extraterrestrials might lead to getting a cure for cancer from them—before he or any other human can figure it out for himself. Wald worried aloud that a vastly superior intelligent race could swallow us alive, much the same way that Western civilization has destroyed cultures around the world.

He took a firm stand for interstellar isolationism, turning his back on the possibilities that contact with extraterrestrial intelligences might be beneficial to the human race.

Would contact with a wiser race destroy our culture? Just how do you define that emotional word, destroy? Certainly human civilization will be vastly changed once we contact other intelligent races. The changes could be improvements, even though Wald seems unwilling or unable to accept that possibility. Cultures do evolve and adapt to changing environments, and not all the changes are destructive. Witness the way the Japanese are blending the best of their culture with many features of Western culture.

Montagu made the point that human beings behave so abominably toward one another that we are bound to disgust anyone who contacts us. He urged that we learn how to get along together, in preparation for such interstellar contact. He also suggested that when contact is made, all government officials and agencies be kept strictly out of the picture. Only us enlightened professors ought to be involved.

This was a crucial statement; it illuminated the entire mind-set of the whole panel, I think.

Montagu castigated the human race sternly. In his words, we've "corrupted the spirit of man and made him the most dangerous creature on Earth."

As a sermon, it was fair. As a comment about discovering life elsewhere in the universe, it was wide of the mark by a few parsecs. H.G. Wells said it earlier, and better, and oftener.

Stendahl, the theologian, suggested that contact with extraterrestrials would force people to face the question of whether or not their conception of God is totally anthropomorphic. Again, an old science-fiction theme: What happens when the six-legged slimy uglies from Arcturus claim that God created them in His image?

It was Morrison who made the unkindest cut of all. After listening to all of the above, he described how he thought radio contact would be made and gloried in the vast amounts of knowledge that we would gain from such contact. Fine. He is an utterly rational man. Then he went on to say:

"But I hope very much that the universe of circumstance is wider than the rather shoddy imaginations of science-fiction writers during the past thirty or forty years. I am pretty well convinced it is. We have not found their guidance so great in any but the most modest activities, like going to the Moon. Science fiction of a hundred years ago told us how to go to the Moon, and we have done that."

I don't mind terribly much the fact that these experts failed to come up with any new insights that haven't been studied in literally hundreds of science-fiction stories over those same thirty or forty years. I do resent the fact that Morrison—who is truly brilliant in fields where he has some knowledge and experience—should take us to task! Especially when his very words indicate that he hasn't read any of the science fiction that has dealt with the subject!

From "The War of the Worlds" to James Gunn's "The Listeners," science-fiction writers and readers have thought about, discussed and debated the possibilities of extraterrestrial life in far more detail than the BU panelists did. In science fiction, we have examined problems and propositions that never even occurred to the panelists. For example:

In Stanley Schmidt's novel, "The Sins of the Fathers" (recently serialized here in Analog), the question of motivation was central: Why would another race want to contact us, or anyone else?

Remember Montagu's remark about keeping government people out of the picture? I think it was the key to the major failing of the panel.

Each of the panelists—the so-called experts—is a university professor. Each of them assumed, quite automatically, that whoever contacts us from Out There will be intellectually similar to themselves: alien university professors, driven by pure curiosity to contact other campuses around the galaxy.

This is the pathetic fallacy that experts often fall into: intellectual anthropomorphism. "This is the way I would do it, so it must be the way they will do it." It's an easy trap to fall into.

And the next step is even easier. The expert says to himself, "Since I know the right way to do it, all other ways must be wrong." A man with a steel-trap mind isn't very valuable when the trap's snapped shut and rusted so badly that it can't be opened again.

These men were not experts. Not on the subject of extraterrestrial life.

OK, so there are no experts in that field. Not yet. But there is a large body of people who have a considerable amount of "practice, skill, experience and knowledge" about the subject. It's all theoretical work, true. But it's far more than the BU panelists displayed.

It's us, of course. The science-fictioneers, both readers and writers. Certainly within my own lifetime, there has been more thought, conjecture and study of extraterrestrial life by science-fiction people than by any other group of people on Earth. We have used the thought and research of men such as Sagan and Morrison as a starting place, a jump-off point, a solid foundation for considering the possibilities and consequences of contacting alien intelligences.

That's why this distinguished panel of "experts" came across sounding like 1940-ish science fiction. They've been studying physics and chemistry and biology. They've been grumbling about man's fallen state. They have not been thinking about the realities of extraterrestrial life.

But if the "experts" want to bring themselves up to date on the latest studies of the subject . . . Analog wouldn't be too bad a place to start!

A few words about the effort to get the Post Office to issue a stamp honoring John Campbell.

Nothing's happening.

Not enough people have written to the Postmaster General. And the Post Office moves rather slowly in these matters anyway, unless someone lights a fire under them.

So—here's a match, And I'll tell you where to find the kindling.

The way things get done in Washington is sometimes rather indirect. There are Congressional committees that can influence the Post Office. So, if a large number of Congressmen and Senators began getting letters from their constituents urging a commemorative stamp for John Campbell, the PO just might get nudged.

Write to your Congressperson and Senators. Use important-looking company or group stationery. The more affluent the letterhead appears, the more impressed will be the politicians. We should all write to the members of the House and Senate Science and Astronautics Committees. Each of the Congresspersons and Senators will pass your letters on to the Postmaster General; but when the letters come from the Capitol, they apparently have more effect than those that come directly from private citizens.

The letters should be short, factual, and quietly urgent. They should point out that science fiction has been a major influence among young people, that most of our astronauts got "turned on" to science by reading SF, that science and technology are vitally important to the US, and that John Campbell was the towering figure in the SF field from the 1930's until his death in 1971.

We still may be unable to get a Campbell stamp issued, but we should at least try every possible avenue. And this approach will force you to find out who your Congressperson is. It might be the start of a beautiful (or at least interesting) correspondence!

THE EDITOR